When most people think of “child evangelism,” what comes to mind is something along the lines of Jesus Camp. It recalls a very specific image of adults pounding the Gospel into children, who in turn take the message out on the streets and hand out tracts. We are, naturally, uncomfortable with the idea that children would be manipulated, frightened, or shamed into belief. I think perhaps I understand where it comes from. Many people have been deeply hurt by the church. As a result, they are on a mission to stop anyone else from being hurt by the church. Whatever...

This week, a dad disciplined his daughter. And at the time of me writing this piece, that discipline has been viewed over 14 million times. Personally, I understand Hannah’s father’s frustration with being disrespected. There is nothing that gets me upset as a parent more than when one of my children disrespects me or their father. It hurts any time that I see one of my children behaving in a way that is contrary to the manner that I’ve raised them, but there is a much deeper hurt that comes from being disrespected by one of them. If I found...

It has happened since the beginning. It used to come up less frequently. Maybe at dinner with some family, a friend’s wedding, a random night out. Now, it seems to happen more and more. Thursday afternoon while watching TV or walking the dogs in the morning. It is becoming more and more common for me to come to this realization: My wife is a lot cooler than I am. She is cooler in many ways. Some of the ways rear their heads more often than others, but in a massive and all-encompassing way, she is by far out of my...

As a Christian (what I learned as a child), one is to marry and procreate — in that order. This means finding someone to live with for the rest of that person’s life through whatever protocol (dating, arrangement, etc). Within the sanction of marriage, one is supposed to have children. Now it seems that Christians don’t want to follow the rules. Statistics show that “unmarried Americans will soon outnumber those who are married” meaning that many men and women prefer to live in sin. I’ve always found it interesting when secular group (the British Broadcasting Corporation in this case) writes...

Hope is an expectation, an inventive vision, a dream. Hope is a desire. Hope imagines what faith can create and build. Hope is the designer, the architect, the plans on paper; faith is the carpenter that constructs something tangible, something that you can see and touch from what was once only a dream. When hope is dashed by doubt and fear, love perseveres…and love always has hope! Faith, hope and love, a partnership of pursuable, learnable virtue. As a visionary, a dreamer, hope is where I live. I wake up in the morning with hope at my side, having dreamt...

For those of us who are parents, the question of hope takes us directly to our children. Our hopes are for our children and the life that we launch them into. Then at some point, usually later in life, we discover our hopes are in them, as we look to them to achieve what we were never quite able to pull off. Things like a cleaner, safer, more peaceful planet, whose driving force is love, rather than violence, destructive consumption and greed. Wowser, that’s idealistic. Yes it is, but isn’t idealism the structural helix of a healthy imagination? And isn’t imagination the magnifier of possibility? We (together...

Recent comments by presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann have stirred up the discussion about gay marriage once again. While speaking to a group of high school students, she said that gay people could get married, just not to someone who was the same sex. “They (same-sex couples) can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.” Later she went on to add that “there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There’s no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life.” And there it is;...

The is not a new video but it is a profound one. Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student, was raised by two gay, married women and spoke out about the issue to the Iowa House of Representatives. The House was proposing Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa. What strikes me about this video is not just his character, but the strength of which he makes his argument: the dignity of each human being and the commitment to family and marriage. Regardless of your belief on the issue, one way or the other, it speaks to...

Many, many times in my life I’ve heard my daddy tell the story of his mother’s thankless Thanksgiving. Here’s the story in his own words. I was born on a farm in rural north Alabama on May 26, 1921. My dad rented the farm and grew cotton. My mother had always been in poor health, and in 1928 the doctor told them that if they didn’t move somewhere with an arid climate, she was going to die. So we packed up and moved to west Texas. Dad rented a farm and grew cotton as the cash crop, plus maize and...

Recently I had coffee with a young, new mom. She told me that she quit her full-time job to be with her baby. I listened to her talk glowingly about the bonding they were doing and how “right” this decision felt to her. She said she would go back to work “one day” but “for now” she was doing exactly what she should. Then, in the same breath, she admitted that she was not without some doubt, whispering sheepishly that she couldn’t think of one woman that she admired as a role model, who was a stay-at-home mother. (Ouch, I tried not...

This week, a dad disciplined his daughter. And at the time of me writing this piece, that discipline has been viewed over 14 million times….

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